Clouds of dust rose behind the wheels of the pickup truck as we hurtled over the back road in Palo Verde, El Salvador. When we got to the stone-paved part of the road, the driver slowed as the truck heaved up and down with the uneven terrain. Riding in the back bed of the truck, Ruben (not his real name) and I talked while we held on tight, sitting on sacks of dried beans that he was taking to market.

“It doesn’t come out right,” he said, “it just doesn’t pay anymore to work the land. I take out a loan for seed, and then I can’t count on making it back to pay off my debt.” Continue reading →

Migrants hoping for U.S. protection have been waiting in Mexico for months, as the U.S. allowed fewer than ever to enter. Then it changed the rules entirely.

The Trump administration has long said that there’s a right way to seek asylum in the United States: Come to an official port of entry at the border, then invoke the right under U.S. law to humanitarian protection.

But now, thousands of people are being barred from the U.S. precisely because they followed those rules.

A new report published Friday by the International Rescue Committee offers policy solutions for the crises in Northern Triangle countries. (Photo: IRC)

Following recent outrage over President Donald Trump’s decision to slash aid to Central American countries, a new report out Friday details how his administration has “manufactured” a crisis at the southern border and offers policy solutions for how the U.S. can better address the flood of asylum-seekers from the region.

By every moral or ethical standard it is your duty to refuse orders to “defend” the U.S. from these migrants.

Your Commander-in-chief is lying to you. You should refuse his orders to deploy to the southern U.S. border should you be called to do so. Despite what Trump and his administration are saying, the migrants moving North towards the U.S. are not a threat. These small numbers of people are escaping intense violence. In fact, much of the reason these men and women—with families just like yours and ours—are fleeing their homes is because of the US meddling in their country’s elections. Look no further than Honduras, where the Obama administration supported the overthrow of a democratically elected president who was then replaced by a repressive dictator.

These extremely poor and vulnerable people are desperate for peace. Who among us would walk a thousand miles with only the clothes on our back without great cause? The odds are good that your parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc. lived similar experiences to these migrants. Your family members came to the U.S. to seek a better life—some fled violence. Consider this as you are asked to confront these unarmed men, women and children from Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador. To do so would be the ultimate hypocrisy.

The U.S. is the richest country in the world, in part because it has exploited countries in Latin America for decades. If you treat people from these countries like criminals, as Trump hopes you will, you only contribute to the legacy of pillage and plunder beneath our southern border. We need to confront this history together, we need to confront the reality of America’s wealth and both share and give it back with these people. Above all else, we cannot turn them away at our door. They will die if we do.

By every moral or ethical standard it is your duty to refuse orders to “defend” the U.S. from these migrants. History will look kindly upon you if you do. There are tens of thousands of us who will support your decision to lay your weapons down. You are better than your Commander-in-chief. Our only advice is to resist in groups. Organize with your fellow soldiers. Do not go this alone. It is much harder to punish the many than the few.

In solidarity,

Rory Fanning
Former U.S. Army Ranger, War-Resister
Spenser Rapone
Former U.S. Army Ranger and Infantry Officer, War-Resister

The court, as ACLU SoCal noted, found “sufficient evidence that racism is a motivating factor behind Trump’s decision to terminate TPS.”

The Trump administration’s attacks on the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program have spurred organized protests across the country. (Photo: LIUNA/Twitter)

A federal judge on Wednesday delivered an “incredible” win for immigrant rights advocates and beneficiaries of Temporary Protected Status (TPS), blocking the Trump administration from ending protections for more than 300,000 people from El Salvador, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Sudan who live in the United States.

San Francisco-based U.S. District Court Judge Edward Chen concluded in his 43-page ruling (pdf) that the TPS holders from those four countries and their children—including many who were born in the United States—would “suffer irreparable harm and great hardship” absent the court’s temporary injunction. Continue reading →

At the time of his arrest while covering a protest, “I was doing my work and nothing more, like any other journalist does,” says Manuel Duran.

Manual Duran, seen on the left, is arrested by police on April 3, 2018. (Photo: screengrab/YouTube)

Amid new revelations showing that Trump’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) appears to be increasing its indiscriminate arrests of undocumented immigrants—not prioritizing those with serious criminal records—one journalist in custody and facing possible deportation says in a new interview that he believes his arrest was absolutely the result of his reporting critical of the Memphis Police Department and Department of Homeland Security.

At the time of his arrest in April, “I was doing my work and nothing more, like any other journalist does,” 42-year-old Manuel Duran told The Daily Beast in Spanish. He said he believes he was apprehended “without a doubt” as a result of his reporting. Continue reading →

Inhumane forms of immigrant mass incarceration weren’t rolled out by Trump alone, but we should still recognize the danger of the Homeland Security State’s rapid expansion and growing cruelty.

The ongoing furor over a drastic increase in the mass confinement of migrant families and children has forced people in the United States to cast a hard look at the immigration enforcement regime that has aggressively developed in recent years.

The discussion is increasingly recasting immigrant detention centers as U.S. concentration camps. This has brought questions of justice, human and civil rights back into focus — in contrast to the Trump administration’s narrow reliance on the question of law-and-order. Continue reading →

The human rights office says the practice “amounts to arbitrary and unlawful interference in family life, and is a serious violation of the rights of the child.”

The United Nations human rights office on Tuesday demanded that the Trump administration “immediately halt” its policy of tearing migrant children away from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, declaring that the practice “always constitutes a child rights violation.”

Under the administration’s so-called zero tolerance policy, unveiled last month by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, border agents separate children from their parents at the border and prosecute the adults. The approach, which is being framed as a deterrent to stop migrants from attempting to enter the country, has been widely denounced as “evil” and spurred protests from immigrant rights advocates. Continue reading →